Pelosi endorses censure of Trump over Charlottesville response

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi on Friday endorsed a call to censure President Donald Trump for his response to last weekend's violent white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia.

"The President’s repulsive defense of white supremacists demands that Congress act to defend our American values," she said in a statement.

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Pelosi noted that Democratic Reps. Jerry Nadler of New York, Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey and Pramila Jayapal of Washington have introduced a censure resolution and added, "Every day, the President gives us further evidence of why such a censure is necessary."

At least 79 Democratic colleagues have signed on to the measure, the three lawmakers said Friday.

A censure represents a rarely used, significant rebuke of the president and can be a preliminary step before impeachment. In a GOP-controlled Congress, this push for a censure will not get far.

Even for Republicans who have criticized Trump for his response to Charlottesville, it will be difficult to endorse such a move against a president from their own party.

Furthermore, in addition to taking aim at the president for his words, the censure resolution says Trump "has surrounded himself with, and cultivated the influence of, senior advisors and spokespeople who have long histories of promoting white nationalist, racist and anti-Semitic principles and policies within the country."

The resolution also calls on Trump to "fire any and all White House advisors who have urged him to cater to the white supremacist movement in the United States." It explicitly names top advisers Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka as aides who should be let go for "ties to white supremacist movements."

Trump has faced serious criticism over the past week, first for initially suggesting that "many sides" were to blame for the violence that broke out in Charlottesville, where neo-Nazis and white supremacists marched against the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. A woman, Heather Heyer, was killed when a car driven by a neo-Nazi sympathizer plowed into a crowd of people.

After a more forceful condemnation of bigotry and racism on Monday, Trump reverted to his original argument Tuesday in a defiant news conference at which he attacked the "alt-left" and said many "fine people" were also among the white nationalist protesters.

Trump has since repeatedly criticized efforts to remove Confederate statues, even as a chorus of Republican lawmakers has called on him to more roundly condemn white nationalists.